


Ten Million Trials for You

by saffron159



Category: A thousand pieces of you, Firebird - Fandom, a million worlds with you, ten thousand skies above you
Genre: Attempted Murder, Berkelyverse, Body swapping shenanigans, Cambridgeverse, Dimension Travel, Dubious Consent, F/M, Interdimensional dating, Kidnapping, Londonverse, Mistaken Identity, References to Depression, Theo Beck POV, Warverse, accidental handjob, suicide attempt not MC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:41:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24459868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saffron159/pseuds/saffron159
Summary: The Firebird Project was over. Labeled a success, Theo, Marguerite, and Paul went their separate ways. Until Theo gets a frantic phone call. Cambridgeverse is in trouble. Their Sophia and Henry are missing, and so is their new project, The Nouveau-Operator. Everyone suspects foul play, but who could it be? Home Office is out of the equation, and Triadverse is well watched. Theo's tossed to Cambridgeverse, where he partners with that dimension's Marguerite. They work together to uncover the truth, but each moment together is just adding to the jumbled emotions inside his head. This girl isn't his Marguerite. She's better, and maybe he's dreaming it, but she seems to look at him the way he looks at her. Maybe they can make it work, once all this Firebird mess is fixed. They can work through this Theo's crippling depression, the suspicion encasing every dimension's Pauls, and the horror of loving someone an entire dimension away.This is a continuation of the trilogy, picking up approximately 10 months after the end of A Million Worlds with You. It'll be about novel length when completed.Updated weekly.
Relationships: Paul/Marguerite, Theo/Marguerite
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

The tires swerved at a deadly angle…

Deadly in a personal way,

As they were heading straight for me.

I could’ve tried to roll out of the way, but I was surrounded by traffic, my feet squarely in the middle of a crosswalk. The blank stares of strangers met my terrified gaze as they stared from the sidewalk. The crosswalk sign blinked “WAIT” in bold lettering, but obviously, whoever I’d been a few seconds prior hadn’t cared.

Because I’d just arrived here… wherever _here_ was.

Horns blared against my eardrums, and those ever-terrifying tires continued in my direction. Not that it had much choice. Cars zoomed at blurring speeds, crisscrossing around me. That car had two options: hit me or get hit by the other cars.

I didn’t have enough time to truly feel fear. Instead, I searched for something. If I was going to die right here, then I wanted my last sight to be of something magical. The sky above me was dreary and uninspired. The cityscape was unfamiliar. Even my clothes lacked any bit of interesting fringe, no typical graphic t-shirt or fedora I would’ve worn back in my dimension.

My death was going to be much blander than I imagined. Especially considering I’d recently taken up interdimensional travel as a hobby.

I made my peace with staring at all the faces, mortified as they stared at me. Each one matching in horror… except one.

I would’ve known those eyes anywhere, the way her right eye brow crooked to the side when she was thinking, the soft dimples peeking on the corner of her lips even when she wasn’t smiling, curly hair untamed in a struggling ponytail. She was the only one not looking up at my face.

She was glaring at the locket dangling around my neck.

With a sudden flash, she darted in front of a slowing cab, earning a chorus of honks and curses. I didn’t have enough time to brace myself.

“Damn,” I grunted, all of her weight slamming into my torso. “Think you could warn a guy next time?”

Her response was drowned out by the passing of the car, only a few inches from where my head lied prone on the concrete. My lower back was jammed into the sidewalk curb, my legs still dangling in traffic like reject Christmas lights.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Do you have a British accent?”

Those eyes, so open and trusting, bore into me. I ignored the anger. I’d rather just appreciate a moment of her looking into my eyes.

The girl I loved.

The girl I loved from another dimension.

The girl I loved from another dimension who looked two seconds short of punching me.

“This,” she said, pausing to wave her hand over my crumpled form, “is why I refused to visit America with Josie. You lot are all mad.”

“Nice to know America’s reputation supersedes dimensional differences.”

She peeked over her shoulder, a frantic gleam in her eyes.

“Shh. Do you want someone to hear you?” She tugged my arm, pulling me down the block. The city ruckus killed any possibility of chatting, so we simply moved with purpose. The fiasco of pedestrians watching a random man nearly die was over, and the crowd flowed as if it had never been disrupted. It was only after a few blocks of silence that we rounded the corner of an alley, and Big Ben rose into the grey clouds.

“Oh wow… It’s a lot smaller than I thought it’d be.”

“Is that your concern right now? You nearly died!” She stopped, forced to nearly stand against my chest to be heard over the cries of London.

“Oddly enough, not the first time I nearly died while dimension hopping.”

Her eyes went wide. “So, you’ve done this before?”

The concern bubbled in her eyes like the California sea foam, reminding me of the one time I’d convinced Marguerite, _my_ Marguerite, to drive with me to the beach. We’d rolled down the windows. She critiqued every one of my CDs before plugging in her t-phone to shuffle between The Lumineers and Marianas Trench. I’d pretended to judge each song, but she saw through my farce.

This girl in front of me now, she had those same eyes, that same smile, that crazy hair and crazy ideas. She was still my Marguerite in a way, just not _my_ Marguerite.

“Back in my dimension, you and I are friends, and we do this dimension hopping together. I know you’ve met my world’s you.”

“The Berkleyverse Marguerite? She possessed me some time ago.”

“And technically,” I said, interrupting her as she pursed her lips in thought. “We’ve met. Remember that time you were dragged to Cloneverse to talk with all the Marguerites?”

It was impossible for me to forget, and I’d assume sitting at a table surrounded by yourselves would be quite a memorable experience. It’d been about 10 months ago, when Marguerite and I gathered all the important players in the Marguerite-saves-the-universe game. I’d mostly been in charge of the Grand Duchess, but I still remembered jumping into Cloneverse, after wrestling the Grand Duchess into her Firebird, and noting a table full of bright eyes and trickster smiles look up at me. A room populated only by the girl I loved, and none of them loved me.

Not counting the one universe where I got it right. Where I’d woken up naked beside Marguerite, the warmth of her still enveloping me in her heat and scent. Warverse was a farfetched dream I’d never have again.

“I remember being dragged out of my dimension to visit a Hong Kong townhouse. Seeing all my selves…” She shivered. “It had been unpleasant.” She picked at her right sleeve, fidgeting with the frayed patches on the inner arm of the sweater. It had to be a nervous habit, considering the dismay and destruction of the poor sweater… or jumper? Weren’t they called jumpers here? Either way, the thing looks like she’d shoved the right sleeve into a dull lawnmower.

“So, I am in London then? I don’t seem to have a British accent though. Bummer. I would’ve enjoyed listening to me sound all posh for a bit.”

Marguerite rolled her eyes but continued to tug on her sweater. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But either way…” She leaned over and flicked my Firebird dangling from my ill-fitting grey button down. “Let me be the first to welcome you to the dimension dubbed Cambridgeverse.”


	2. Chapter 2

A month ago, I was holed up in a tiny apartment just off the Yale campus. Spring had just arrived to Connecticut, and I was finally able to open the single window in my room. I shared the apartment with four other dudes. How else was a guy supposed to pay for an apartment while studying for his Post-Doc? I needed a fleet of roommates.

I dressed in the morning light from the open window, not concerned at all if the elderly woman across the street sneaked a peek of my boxers. I also didn’t care about the naked girl still asleep in my twin-size bed. I’d given up trying to share the space around 3am and moved to the floor. There was barely enough room for me to spread out on the hardwood, but when you were in college, you learned to sleep wherever you could.

I unplugged my phone from the charger while carefully dodging the girl. I didn’t even remember her name. Victoria? Veronica? Only Tinder knew, and I wasn’t starting my morning opening Tinder. I, at least, needed breakfast first.

Which was when I first checked my phone, with a corner of toast shoved in my mouth, and I saw eight missed called from Sophia Kovalenka, four from Henry Caine, seven from Paul Markov, and only a single text message from Marguerite.

[Why aren’t you answering your phone?]

I pinned a quick response, some lie about being absorbed in a paper and then passing out. I didn’t need to message Paul. He, undoubtably, also had a naked woman in his bed. It was just sadly the woman we both wanted. She’d share my text with him. That just left Sophia and Henry.

Sophia picked up on the second ring.

“Oh thank God Theo. We’ve been worried. Have you talked to Marguerite?”

“I just texted her.”

“Good. That’s good.” Her voice was frantic and uneven. “How quickly can you get to the airport? Google says it’s only 6.76 kilometers from…”

“Whoa whoa Sophia. Slow down. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

There was a pause, a shuffling of papers in the background and the whine of a kettle on the stove.

“We need you to operate a Firebird.”

\-----

Firebirds were the outstanding, fantastical, scientifically sound invention of Henry and Sophia. Finished only a year prior, its creation had instigated a string of terrible adventures. Many of which I either participated in or was possessed for. No in-between.

Which is why, when I boarded the next flight to San Francisco, I might have had a nervous twitch in my wrist. Dude beside me shot me an angry glare when I nearly spilled my soda on him, but I waved it off, blaming the nonexistent turbulence. I could’ve also easily blamed it on the slight numbness in my fingertips, something I’d grown accustomed to. Nightthief was a deadly invention, and I’d been injected with it for nearly four months while the Triadverse’s Theo controlled my body and manipulated Marguerite into _nearly_ killing our Paul. Even Berkley’s best medical students didn’t fully understand the effects of Nightthief. I should be thankful that the only lasting conditions seemed to be slight numbness in my extremities and a mild migraine disorder.

I didn’t blame anyone though. It was far from Henry and Sophia’s fault that they were gifted scientific geniuses. I guess I could’ve tossed the guilt onto Triadverse’s Theo, but he was dead. Not a lot of point in blaming a dead man. So, I just went on with my life. Five months ago, our dimension had nearly melted into nonexistence when the path between Home Office and the rest of the dimensions was barricaded off. After that, it had been a string of awards for the great scientists, a round of FBI questioning for Paul and Marguerite, and state-mandated psychiatric evals for all of us. Paul was the only one they required to continue weekly secessions. But when your MRIs looked like a nightclub’s laser show, you weren’t just allowed to not show up for therapy. After that, things had been quiet for me. I’d accepted my Post-Doc at Yale, queried an essay on the mathematical relationship between the matter and anti-matter balance within the Firebird, and slept my way through every single woman in a 10mi radius.

I still missed Marguerite.

I still loved Paul like the brother he was.

I still had weekly phone calls with Henry about the Beetles.

And speaking of Henry, he met me at the airport gate wearing a faded Beetles shirt and carrying a locked briefcase. The shirt was expected. The briefcase? Not so much.

He encased me in a hug the instant I crossed the threshold. “Nice to see you again.”

“What’s with all the feelings? Did I miss something?”

He glanced around the busy airport. “Not here. Come on. Sohpia’s waiting in the car.”

It wasn’t until we were on the highway, back to their suburban house that either of them finally expressed anything other than glee at seeing me and concealed, worried expressions.

“We’ve lost contact with the other dimensions,” Sohpia said, glancing at me through the rearview mirror.

Henry piped up. “I’m sure you remember the discovery in the dimension called ‘Cambridgeverse’”? Marguerite had gone there during all that business with Paul’s splintering. They’d abandoned the Firebird Project in favor of researching devices that allowed for dimensional conversing without the need to jump from dimension to dimension. They saw it as invasive, which it most certainly is.”

“No disagreeing with you there.”

There was a lull in the explanation, as all three of us remembered our own experiences with Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Sophia had only secondhand accounts, but Henry and I have nearly died. Nightthief would’ve left me in a coma without Marguerite’s intervention. Henry had been shot into some distance aquamarine universe, destined to drown, figuratively and literally.

“Well,” Sophia began, “We’d all come to an agreement, those of us in the Dimensional Information and Culture Agreement. No more Firebird unless in an emergency or during an agreed upon timeframe where all parties had blatantly given their consent.”

She paused, only to sigh at the growing cloud of exhaust as traffic condensed into the viscosity of concrete.

“The interdimensional discourse was labeled a success,” Henry continued for her. “I’d even been able to race in the New York Times crossword puzzle. The Henry in the Cambridgeverse usually had the exact same crossword as us here in Berkleyverse. It was remarkable. Whomever writes those must really have their destiny intertwined with the art of flawless crosswords.”

Sophia placed a hand on her husband’s knee, quieting the chatter. “Honey, I know you miss your crossword buddy.”

“It was how we found out!” He said, tossing his hands into the air. “That Henry never sent across his finish time. That was when I knew foul play was involved. He usually beats me.”

“Wait, whoa, slow down Henry.” I leaned forward, straining my seat belt. “Are you saying the Henry in Cambridgeverse was attacked?”

“Not attacked, or well, we don’t think he was attacked. We don’t know what to think, because we haven’t heard from anyone, in any dimension. The Communicator isn’t functioning.”

\-----

“Wow. London really is dreary.”

“Oii, not like your California is much better.”

Hand to my chest in mock disbelief, I glared down at Marguerite as we walked through the light mist. “California is a lot a things, but never ‘dreary.’

“Maybe not, but it’s definitely boring.”

“I genuinely don’t believe anyone in the history of any dimension has ever considered California boring.”

Her left hand fussed with the pilling on her sweater as we talked. It was a pristine blue on everywhere but her inner, right forearm, where it dulled to a plucked, murky navy. Her shoes scraped over the sidewalk, the canary yellow canvas high-tops splotched with glittery paint in full contrast to the dull blues and blacks of the rest of her attire.

“I guess I need to get used to California, though… With Hollywood being there…”

We’d come to a halt under a corner store’s awning. She claimed to know where we were going, but I couldn’t tell one dull sign post form another. Everyone swiveled around us in black coats, their collars turned up against the misty haze. The picking on her arm grew with a feverish anxiety that was starting to make my own heart race. Nails picking at the edges of her cuff, in the crease of her elbow.

My hand extended on its own volition. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t _my_ Marguerite. Dimension jumping was hard enough to get your brain to wrap around. The heart was a little slower to catch on.

I tucked a lose lock of hair behind her ear, the curls slightly damp on the tips of my fingers. “You okay? You keep fidgeting with your…”

“It’s nothing. Let’s go before the rain’s worse.”

And in moments I was forced to jog to keep up with her. Her hands clamped at her sides, elbows locked in place. It was a comical scene, a 19 year-old girl shuffling down the sidewalk with her arms as stiff as boards, chased by a lost American severely underdressed for the weather.

“Marguerite!”

She ignored me, darting down for an entrance to the subway. “Keep up now.”

How was I supposed to when she was ducking through the crowd like a crazed pigeon?

Taking my chance as we passed a field trip of elementary schoolers, I dashed forward and clamped onto her wrist.

“Sorry if I brought something up you didn’t want to talk about.” Whatever that may be. “We don’t need to talk about it, but you can’t just abandon me in London. For a lot of reasons, the primary one being I’m supposed to be here to help.”

She stopped, finally, going limp. The rush hour commuters were as thick as the clouds outside, but they parted around us on their way home. It was like being rocks in a stream of midnight water.

“I don’t know what you’re actually going to help.”

“If it makes you feel better, I don’t know what I’m going to help either. The Henry and Sophia in my world just lobbed a Firebird at me and demanded I jump over here to figure out why Cambridgeverse isn’t communicating with anyone.”

“No one is communicating with anyone,” she said, looking up at me with those hazel eyes that were my own personal nightmare. “We housed the Operator.”

“If communications are shut down among all dimensions, that would make sense as to why my Marguerite and Paul were sent out to Cloneverse and Warverse.” All I’d overheard from Sophia was Marguerite was to pop into one of her clones and communicate with the Sophia there, as it was her research on neurology that allowed Cambridgeverse to complete interdimensional communication at all. Warverse was just a chatty little place, so Paul was ordered there as a dial-up speed telegram postman.

Marguerite sighed. She glanced at her cell phone, some bizarre tech called an “iphone” that was decently similar to my tphone back home.

“Come on, I can fill you in on the ride home.”

\-----

It’d taken a subway ride, a train transfer, and a taxi for us to finally arrive at Marguerite’s house. In that time, she’d broken down the whole scenario for me.

“So, this world was a hub?” I’d asked on the train. It was smoother than any rickety monstrosity back in my home dimension. “You guys basically act like a switch operator back when old phones were in use? When Warverse Sophia needed to ask Berkleyverse Sophia a question, you guys would get a ping from Warverse, indicating which Sophia in all the dimensions the question was intended for? And then you guys would process the signal and launch it to its destination?”

She nodded. “We called it the ‘Operator.’ It was no bigger than a laptop. A very simple machine really. Even I worked it sometimes, if Mum or Dad wasn’t home when we got a ping. My world’s Paul programmed an app for our phones. If there’s a ping, it alerts us. Or if someone jumps into our universe, the Operator detects it and will notify our phones with the exact latitude and longitude. It was how I knew someone had jumped into my universe.”

“I’m glad you noticed. Who knows where I’d be if you hadn’t tackled me out of the way.”

“I was thankfully at a café down the way when I got the notification. What were you doing in the traffic anyway?”

I shrugged. “Beats me. Ask this Theo once I jump back to my own body.”

We were sitting beside each other. Even with only a profile view of her, I saw the light dent on her lip as she chewed on the corner and her fingers instinctively reaching to scratch at that frayed part of her sweater.

“Do you think it was a trap?”

I instantly opened my mouth to retort any such claim, but my voice caught in my throat. Marguerite had mentioned this, how Wicked had lied traps for her, so that when she jumped into a new Marguerite, she’d be dangerously close to dying in some horrific manner. But all of that was supposed to be over. Home Office was locked away forever, maybe even collapsed. They only had a 40% chance of not imploding in a collision of matter and anti-matter. Either way, Home Office was out of the game. Triadverse’s Wyatt Conley, the evil mastermind wreaking havoc in multiple dimensions, was dead, alongside my evil clone. All the bad guys were gone.

“You can’t tell me you suspect foul play. Who’s left to even play against us. I’m not a sports fan, but I’m fairly certain you need enough players to have an opposing team. I thought we’d taken care of most of them.”

“There might be a new one,” she said, giving into the impulse and rubbing her fingers over her inner forearm. The poor fabric looked mere minutes from fraying into broken strands.

“My parents are missing.”

“Wait. This world’s Sophia and Henry are gone? Is that why no one’s been able to send messages back and forth?”

She nodded. “I haven’t seen them in days, and their new invention is gone too. It was an improvement to the Operator. It would’ve gotten rid of the switchboard trait entirely, allowing for direct communication between dimensions without the need for someone here to operate the laptop.”

I finished her explanation. “Basically, it turned our 50’s shared phone line connection into a 90’s antenna cell phone. Simple enough.”

“And the Operator’s been destroyed.”

I peered at her over the rim of my burnt Colombian roast. “So… your parents are missing. Their new invention to allow better communication between the dimensions is missing. And the Operator is non-functioning… Any reason you waited so long to tell me all of this?”

“Don’t judge me. What was I supposed to do? I have no Firebird. I did my best to fix the Operator, but I’m no computer expert. I was watching tutorials on computer repair when I received your arrival ping. I’m lucky the jumping pings even still work! The Operator was dissembled into a pile of bits. I’ve been the only one here! Josie is off in Dublin at Uni. Mum and Dad are gone… I’m doing my best.”

Her rage died as she ranted, dying to a whisper as she turned her chin down to peer at her overly colorful shoes.

“What about Paul? He’s a computer guy, at least in my dimension. Could he fix the Operator?”

She went rigid. “I can’t contact him,” she said, that heartbroken whisper replaced with an icy disgust.

Okay then. I wasn’t about to touch that topic. She didn’t want to talk about Paul? Fantastic. My Marguerite talked about him enough for everyone of her other selves in the whole multiverse.

I placed my hand on her shoulder. “Hey, look, it’s okay. I know you’ve been alone in this. That’s why Berkleyverse sent me. I’m supposed to show up and figure out what’s going on. You’re not alone anymore.”

She turned those hazel eyes up at me. I could feel her searching for something in my gaze, maybe a hint of doubt or lies. She found none.

\-----

The apartment was walking distance from the Cambridge campus. It had that innate British quaintness you usually only see on popular BBC shows. Tall plants in the doorway. Old and warped wooden board floors. A flowered wallpaper that should’ve fell out of use a century ago.

“Want me to make tea?”

“True British hospitality at its finest. What shall we do after? Tour Buckingham Palace and watch a rugby game while we eat unseasoned, mashed peas?”

I caught her mid eye roll, but at least it was accompanied with a stout laugh.

“True American ignorance at its finest. What shall you do next? Complain about the weather and then put sugar and ice in your tea.”

“One, I’ve already complained about the weather, and two, only half of the United States does the whole sugar in iced tea thing. It’s not that big in California.”

I toured the house as our teasing bounced back and forth. Well, once I convinced their tiny pug that I wasn’t a threat to his favorite chair. It was what I expected from Henry and Sophia’s house. Papers scattered under table legs. Books shoved into any free orifice, whether or not it made sense to store a battered copy of J.G. Ballard’s short stories in a potted fern. On a wooden table at the edge of the kitchen sat the remains of a computer. The outer shell looked like it’d last been popular in the early 2000’s, but just by glancing at the chips and processor, I knew it’d been gutted and updated with the latest technology.

“The app you downloaded on your phone, does it connect with the Operator or with something else?” I asked. I picked up a pile of identical size screws Marguerite must have gathered. The dual-fan cooling until was already repaired.

Marguerite placed a steaming mug in front of me. Whiffs of black tea gently tickled my nose. Her own mug was a creamier color, so filled with milk it almost lapped the rim of the cracked mug.

“I’m not sure. It connects to the Operator, I thought.”

“This thing has an internal battery, so I guess it’s theoretically possible for it to still be shooting out signals, but if so, whoever programmed it basically made sure that its dying wheeze would be to send a notification. Unless the program is also being housed in a different computer.”

“There’s Mom’s computer in her office at work. It might have a back up.”

“That’s more likely,” I said, sighing at the Torx screwdriver. “Why don’t we check there in the morning. I’m going to try and see if I can repair this monstrosity.”


	3. Chapter 3

British couches must have been made of rubber cement and plucked turkeys with how little I slept last night. I’d spent a thousand nights passed out on the giant couch in the living room back in Cali. I usually slept like a rock. This? This thing was an Arthurian torture device.

From the pinnacles of sleep I heard soft kitchen noises, the opening a fridge and the drip of a coffee machine.

“I think your couch was once used to torture farm peasants into signing away their sheep herds to the king.”

“No one said you had to sleep there. You dragged your own tired arse to it. I could’ve told you the bathtub would’ve been a better sleep, but did you think to ask me? Nope.”

I laughed, reaching for my shirt I’d thrown to the floor late into the night. The Operator was balanced on a stack of books on the coffee table. It looked a lot better than it did before I arrived, if by “better” I meant that it looked recognizable as a laptop. That didn’t mean it worked.

Marguerite popped her head around the frame into the kitchen. Her curls dangled loose around her face. I didn’t often get to see her hair undone from a bun or braid. My Marguerite always attempted to keep it in place, and she never accepted my compliments that it looked better unbound. This world’s Marguerite apparently agreed with me.

This dimension’s Marguerite was also holding a plate of food.

“Blueberry waffles?”

\-----

“Wow, you can really cook,” I choked out past a mouth full of waffle. I’d already eaten three. “This tastes like Henry’s back in my dimension.”

She shrugged, running the tip of her finger along the rim of her coffee mug. It was still just as milky as she’d made her tea. It was so muted I’d joked that it looked like there was more milk than coffee.

“It is my dad’s.”

I paused mid-chew. “Hey, look, we’ll find them, okay? I promise. I won’t stop until we find them.”

“You don’t even know them. Why should you help?”

“Any Henry and Sophia are worth saving. Believe me. You couldn’t find a better pair of people.”

She finally stopped scrapping at her arm, but I doubted it was cause of my lackluster pep talk and more because Ringo was scratching at her chair. She gave him a quick pat behind the ears. Her mood never improved, even after I finished another waffle in a semi-comfortable silence. Swallowing a gulp of my own coffee, with a _realistic_ amount of milk, I took my chance. This was still Marguerite. It may not have been my Marguerite, but it was _a_ Marguerite. We’d already proven there were some consistencies between the dimensions.

“So, do you like art too?”

Damn, was that the _wrong_ question.

She slammed her wrist down. Her mug swirled off the table, clattering to the tile with a reverberating clank. Coffee milk splattered across her lap, thankfully, too milked down to be burn level. Ringo yelped and took off for the sanctity of the living room.

“No. I don’t like art.”

She rose out of the chair, reaching for the mug that had, by some miracle, not shattered. She dropped it in the sink before excusing herself to go change.

“What was that about?” I asked Ringo. He was still shaking.

She bounced down the stairs in a new sweater and skirt combo. As we walked to the campus, she refused to make conversation about anything. I tried popstars, history, even sports, despite how dismal my sports knowledge was. Nothing. So, we walked along, the only sound our footsteps and her restless picking at her sweater.

“Mom’s office is on the top floor.”

It was the first thing either of us had said in a good half hour. And it was entirely followed by a lapse of silence until we reached the top floor and Marguerite pushed open the door.

And kneeling on the floor, amongst stacks of scattered graphs and formulas was Paul.

“What are you doing here?!”

Marguerite’s yell made me jump more than him. Paul simply tilted his head towards the floor, chin down. He closed his eyes for a few moments before speaking.

“Something is wrong with Sophia and Henry.”  
“No duh Sherlock. How’d you figure that out? Because they’re missing and their offices are trashed?”

Skipping right over that attitude, she was right about the office. It was so much more than just Sophia’s typical erratic papers and overgrown plants. The desk was coated in a thick coat of sticky, partially evaporated coffee. It layered over the keyboard and monitor. The desktop on the floor sported a particularly concerning footprint in the outer casing. The cord that would’ve connected it to the private Cambridge research server had been ripped from the wall socket.

“This is so methodical…” I began to walk laps around the room, ignoring both Marguerite and Paul. It was obvious that this Paul… Wait.

“You know who’s one of the most methodical people I’ve ever met?” I paused, turning so that my back was to the undisturbed bookcase. I held up my hands as Paul narrowed his eyes. “Look, I’m not saying it’s you or anything. But how do we know that you are this world’s Paul and not some body snatcher?”

“How do I know that you’re whoever you claim to be?”

“Touché, but I’m one ahead of you there. Marguerite already verified me. The Operator apparently is as notification crazed as Twitter, spamming anyone nearby whenever a new traveler pops into this dimension.”

Paul’s eyes go blank, that surefire sign he’s thinking over all the data. It was as notorious as Triad’s spinning rainbow of death during loading screens.

“I haven’t been getting those.”

“Of course not,” Marguerite stepped towards him. He cowered down into the papers in his hands. “I asked Mom and Dad to keep you off the notification chat so that when we arrived to greet new travelers, I wouldn’t have to deal with also seeing you while being petrified of some murder assassin coming after me. You heard the story about Wicked.”

“Wicked is locked away,” Paul said.

“Yeah, but who’s to say she’s the only evil me in the entire multiverse? I may not be a math genius like you, but I’m not dumb.”

Paul’s shoulder slumped even further. He was a pancake of his former self, his natural rock-climbing physique crumpling. “I never said you were dumb. Marguerite… you know I would never…”

“Shut up. I don’t care.”

“Okay, there’s obviously something going on with you two,” I said, braving the storm I saw brewing in Marguerite’s fierce expression. “But either way, let’s stay on topic. We need a way to verify this Paul belongs to this universe. Back in Berkleyverse, we ask personal questions, something only our world’s individual would know the answer to.”

Marguerite didn’t even hesitate.

“What song was playing when you crashed the car?”

The room vacuumed sealed, Paul’s flinch and accompanying gasp sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It was as physical as if she’d punched him. Papers tumbled out of his shaking fingers.

“Someone You Loved by Lewis Capaldi.”

I’ve never heard of that song or that singer. He must be unique to this dimension.

Marguerite raised her chin, sturdy while a storm battered within her. “He’s this world’s Paul.”

I clasped my hands together. The sound was enough to restart the tension in the room. I took a deep breath. “Okay, so we’re all who we’re supposed to be. Next step, how is the Operator functioning if Henry’s laptop is destroyed? Sophia’s mainframe host has also taken a beating.” I gestured to the desktop tower.

Paul’s head jerked towards me. “Henry’s laptop is destroyed, and Marguerite still received a notification about your arrival? My program must have caught it.”

“What program?” Marguerite asked, her tone still as bitter. I softly made my way to her. When I got to her side, I gently clasped her shoulder.

“Hey, I can see that something is… going on between you and Paul, but let’s work together for the moment, alright?”

“I’m not sure if I can trust him.”

Paul hung his head. He was still crouching on the floor, looking more like a servant bowing to their king than a grown man searching for info among scattered reports. “You have every reason to hate me. I accept that. But you should know that the Operator’s programming is backed up on my personal device. Not all of it, obviously, but some of the major functions. It was Henry’s idea,” he added right at the end. He was probably scared Marguerite would accuse him of stealing it.

“So, that was how Marguerite still got the ping about my glorious arrival. Can you use it to transfer messages to among the connected dimensions?”

“My backup was supposed to be a secret, never activating unless it detected a shutdown of the mainframe and Henry’s portable program. But it’s only a backup, running emergency operations on a gutted ipad a few generations old. I’d need to upload the program to a specialized computer before we could send messages.” He reached into a bookbag at his knees, where he removed a dated tablet.

“I don’t believe you.”

I met her eyes. “Marguerite… We have”

“Do you trust your Paul?” She interrupted.

Slapped by her words, my mind was teleported back to that grimy New York alleyway. Paul, the Paul of another dimension with a sliver of my Paul inside him, pointing a gun at me. He fired without hesitating. The pain flickered in my memory, and my right leg shivered. My body remembered as well as my mind. The skin being blow away, soaked in blood, muscle and bone mixing together on the sidewalk. The impact of the bullet shattered my femur into fragments, so tiny they’d been invisible within the globs of muscles beside me.

“I trust him when he’s him,” I said, but before she could even respond, I remembered the truth. My dimension’s Paul was fractured. All the MRIs said the same thing, brain signals firing for no reason, for all reasons, adrenaline and cortisol constantly bombarding his frontal lobe while testosterone assaulted his pituitary gland. Doctors weren’t even sure how he was alive. The medical science of my dimension wasn’t advanced enough. Paul’s condition was all his own, and he faced it alone. Marguerite helped, but since they’d gone off to England, we hadn’t had as much contact. Plenty of Skype calls, yeah, but no weekends downtown, no late nights performing experiments in the living room while Marguerite painted portraits of her dimension-hopping journey.

As much as I hated to admit it to myself, I couldn’t trust my Paul. No one could.

Cambridgeverse’s Paul saw he was losing the fight. “I already checked Henry’s office,” he said, trying to fill the empty silence before I could openly agree with Marguerite. “The Nouveau-Operator is missing, the one to allow immediate communication between dimensions. It was made of the same materials as the Firebirds, so it can easily travel dimensions. But…” He paused while a line of perspiration dotted his forehead. “I was supposed to travel to Zurich yesterday, for my Post-doc. But, I canceled the flight. Because a few days ago… I don’t remember it. Not fully. It’s foggy. I remember talking to Henry. I talked Sophia into eating out at a pub. But, I don’t recall why, or what happened afterwards.”

“So, the Nouveau-Operator was stolen? _And_ my parents were kidnapped? _And_ you’re missing a whole day from your memory? How could you mess up again?!”

This was quickly dissolving into a screaming assault. I grabbed both of Marguerite’s shoulders, so I could push her back a step and place myself between her and Paul.

“Look, Marguerite, it’s not this guy’s fault if Triadverse sent some undercover operative to use his face and connections to get to the Nouveau-Operator, that’s hardly his fault. Believe me. I’ve been there. I felt like shit for months. Still do sometimes.”

Her face fell. Locks of lose curls tumbled into her face. Before I could stop myself, or even consider why it was a bad idea, I tucked them behind her ear.

“We obviously are working with a trained dimension jumper. Hopefully this won’t get as big as it did last year, but if it does, we’re going to need all the help we can get, alright? Not sure why you’re ready to toss the guy off a cliff, but he’s our ally right now. And he’s given us some important info. He has a backup for the Operator. We know the Nouveau-Operator was taken to a different dimension. We know that Henry and Sophia were either kidnapped or followed the attacker. And we know that it was carried out by some dimension’s Paul.”

“I hurt her.”

I turned 180 degrees to face Paul. I couldn’t see Marguerite as I glared down at Paul. I could only feel her palm on the back of my shoulder, finding as much comfort in me as I did in her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Any Marguerite, in any dimension, was still a Marguerite, was still a piece, one of thousands, that belonged to the girl I loved.

“Can we not?” Marguerite asked. Her voice dropped, barely above a whimper. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She reached for my arm, turning me to partially face her. I had one eye on her blush-tinted cheeks and one eye on Paul’s shameful grimace.

“We need to warn your dimension’s Paul and Marguerite. You told me they’re traveling to our ally dimensions. Paul is good at computers, which also answers the question of who destroyed Dad’s laptop and Mom’s desktop.”

“The _other_ Paul,” I provided.

“Paul and I will go back to my apartment. He can try to repair Dad’s laptop. Mom’s desktop looks like whoever attacked it didn’t have enough time to fully destroy it. The outer casing and wall socket took the worst of it. While we work on that, you can jump to the other dimensions to warn your Marguerite and Paul.”

“Will you be okay?”

Two minutes ago, she was screaming at Paul for being worthless.

She shrugged. “I have to be, I guess. He’ll come over and then I’ll lock him out once he’s done. Then I’ll just hang around with this dimension’s Theo until you come back.”

I glanced at Paul. His guilt screamed as loud as his shame. Whatever he’d done to Marguerite, he regretted it as much as she hated it.

“I’m only going to talk to Berkleyverse Paul and Marguerite. Then I’ll be right back.”

Her fingers picked at her inner arm, strands instantly falling away to the carpet. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Be safe, okay?”

My heart lurched, but I swallowed it back. This wasn’t my Marguerite. I needed to remember that. No matter how much I protected her or how much I did for her, I’d never win my Marguerite’s heart.


	4. Chapter 4

“What the hell Man?! Get the fuck up!”

An explosion rocked through my bones, up my spine, the recipe for an instant migraine. I opened my eyes. A guy with an unkept beard and biker’s pomadour studied my crumpled form with hesitant confusion.

“You think this is funny Privat? Get the hell up! We don’t have time for your beloved practical jokes. The enemy is only a valley away.”

He ripped me up by my arm. My shoulder screeched with agony. Blood pooled through my collar.

“Sargent! Artillery forces appear to be out of ammo,” called a voice. The world was a shadowy trench, with only trees visible in the peak of sunrise. The man beside me turned up a half-sided grin.

“Good job men. Keep ‘em on the retreat. Push those cowards back to Colorado!”

A helicopter flew overhead, search light blinding. Screams and bullets erupted into the air. Everyone around me, men buried in mud and leaves, turned their guns up to fire at it. Metal on metal ricocheting through the air. Bullets were as useless as mosquitos on its chrome exterior.

“Hold fire!” someone yelled.

But no one listened. And then from the belly of the helicopter, a tiny window slid open. Wide enough for the barrel of a gun. It fired without hesitation, twice as loud as the guns worn by the men around me. Everywhere, men screamed, some in death and some in pain. The blood sliding down my arm showed me I’d already been injured, but that didn’t matter as a new bullet flew into my calf.

And then my ankle.

And then my hip.

My own scream sounded too far off, like I was listening to a song echoing out of someone else’s headphones turned up too high. I pressed down on the injury, watching the blood bubble up through my fingers, my pants dyed instantly to a dark rouge.

Not again… I still relived being shot in Mafiaverse. I dreamed it so many nights. And here it was again.

Again and again, I always watched myself die.

Soaked with red ooze, I fumbled with the Firebird. I needed to jump on.

Bark snapped. Right above my head, the shooting and screaming and now, a tree, its trunk giving out under the assault. It was falling at the perfect angle. Someone near me yelled to roll out of the way. I was frozen.

Its weight crushed my skull.

I black out before I can press the final button on the Firebird.

\-----

“Oh my God. Theo.”

Warm fingers brushed my cheeks, pausing at the corner of my lips. I could feel my eyes blinking, but anytime I opened them, I stared up into blackness.

“Theo, baby, stay with me.”

I’d love to, stranger I can’t see, if only because your fingers feel like angel wings. But my vision was spinning, dizzy despite not actually being able to see anything.

“I…” I tried to talk, but that was as far as I got before those frantic hands came back.

“Shhh. It’ll be okay. The doctors said you’ll be okay. I was so worried. Oh, Theo. I was so convinced. When that lieutenant showed up on our doorstep, I saw Mom through my window, I knew what happened. I’d thought I’d lost you.”

My strength was returning, albeit slowly. Everything too an extra layer of concentration to understand. And the first thing I realized was that I recognized that voice. It only made me fight harder to open my eyes.

“Marguerite?”

“Oh, Theo.” Marguerite tossed herself into my partially open arms. She was careful of the bandages around my shoulder. She smelled like maple syrup and hair gel. I could see very little past her bobbed curls, but I didn’t really care. She buried her head in my neck, trailing little kisses up to my ear.

“Whoa…”

Her teeth grazed my ear lobe. I shivered, hard to do when wrapped in gauze and casts. I felt her lips turn up against the light stubble on my jawline.

“Just wait until you’re feeling better. I’ve missed you so much. It’s been months…”

Her words trailed off as she placed a kiss to my jaw, my neck, my collarbone. “Maybe you’d like a preview?”

Her hands, those fingers that’d been so warm on my cheeks, turned to fire as they slid down my neck to my chest. My breath caught in my throat. The thin hospital blanket did little to hide my own enthusiasm at her touch. She noticed as much as I did.

“It’s been awhile, hasn’t it baby?”

The dizziness assaulted me again. But this time I didn’t fight it. The hospital bed didn’t even groan as her added weight joined me. Those hands, as teasing as starlight on the evening horizon, slid down my stomach tepid and careful, calculating.

“How many times did you think of me? Dream of me?”

Dream of Marguerite? Nearly every night, every morning, in the sigh of every forgotten girl from every free hookup app. I murmured an answer, but she silenced it with a finger to my lips.

“Anything less than every night would upset me, so let’s just keep it at that, hmm?”

My only response was to open my mouth and suck on the tip of her finger.

She lied down at my side, her lips hot on my neck. Her hands played tricks, tracing swirls, one in my hair and the other on my stomach. Her gaze burned into me, as hot as her fingertips. I’d lost myself in the fantasy of those eyes, that curly hair tangled in my palm, her moan as I pulled it.

Just like she moaned now.

“Keeping things new? Do it again.”

And so with a kiss as soft as flower petals on her forehead, I twisted those ringlets around my fingers. I pulled without warning, right as she’d relaxed into my chest. Her eyes rolled back. She bit down on her bottom lip. But she repaid my teasing with some of her own. Her hand finally stopped dancing around the bulge beneath the cotton sheet. The only thing separating her hand from my erection was a thin blanket and hospital gown

“I love you,” I said, a half sigh.

She giggled. “You’re more sensitive than I remember.”

Her hand picked up the pace, growing bolder each time I failed to silence a gasp or moan. My arms tucked her against my chest, a steel cage pinning her there beside me, there touching me. My Marguerite… my love. Nothing keeping us apart. No lingering fear in her eyes from memories of Triadverse Theo plotting against her. No Paul swooping in to play the lovestruck, dying soldier. Nothing but her and me. Just like my dreams always were.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she said, just as her hand slipped under the blanket. Just as she finally brought her lips close to mine.

I didn’t hesitate. My hand was still tangled in her hair. I guided her lips to mine, where they waited open and longing.

The kiss was explosive, soft and hot, a sunset and a volcanic eruption. I forced my tongue into her mouth, tasting every inch of her, wishing I could taste so much more of her.

She instantly froze. Her lips. Her hand. Stopped. She pulled back, hovering over me as I dazed up at her. Her eyes had grown huge, and all that desire and lust I loved seeing in them was replaced with betrayal.

“You aren’t my Theo.”

She leaped off the bed, dashing to the tiny dresser I hadn’t noticed in the corner of the room. Only once she was out of my eyesight did I finally take in the room, the dingy hospital décor, an old-fashioned radio on a corner table. The ensigns of the American military decorated the walls. An IV hung beside my bed, connected to my numb arm via a clear tube, where an equally clear liquid pumped into me. The label contained a medication I was unfamiliar with, but considering how groggy my thoughts were, I assumed it was pain medication. Some cousin of oxycontin.

I pushed through the haze in my mind. A battlefield. I remembered a battlefield. And before that? Something about a college campus, strolling through the wind. It smelled like ocean.

Marguerite yanked the bottom drawer out and was tossing its contents all over the floor, until she found what she was looking for. I could tell when she found it because she started spewing more curse words than I’d ever heard her say.

“Who the hell are you?” She asked, standing up and turning to face me. In her palm rested my Firebird.

\-----

“I promise I’m not evil.”

It was the most recent pathetic attempt of many to convince this Marguerite that I wasn’t some demonic spy destined on destroying her dimension’s technology, which in her defense, was what my plan had been the last time I’d popped into the dimension known as “Warverse.”

“Says the dude who just let me give him a handjob.”

“Look,” I said, trying to fight the blush coloring my face and neck. “We already talked about that. I thought you were someone else.”

“And who exactly did you think I was? Some other Marguerite?”

“Actually, yes. But can we just skip over my failures in romancing my own Marguerite and move on to why I’m here?”

“To sabotage the war effort.”

“No. I don’t care about your war. I’m looking…”

She threw her hands up. She’d pulled one of the chairs up to the edge of my bed. I kept shivering without her warmth lying beside me. “Obviously you don’t care about the war. No wonder my Theo was injured in some routine helicopter shootout. You could’ve gotten him killed! Do you have any idea what that would’ve done to me? I don’t care if you share his face in some other dimension. I’d have no problem chasing you down and showing you just how much I care about your dimension. You have guns in your dimension? I bet I’m a better shot than you.”

“I have no doubt of that.” I’ve never fired a gun in my life. The closest I came was a few rounds of paintball.

I was sparred from anymore threats when the door opened. Dressed in a pinstripe, pressed and proper military jacket and skirt was Sophia. She quickly shut the door behind her.

“State your name and your home dimension.”

She glared down from the edge of my bed, stoic as an angry Sophia could be. Her bobby pins were barely containing her curly hair. It added an Albert Einstein look to her angry persona.

“Theo Beck. Berkleyverse.”

Marguerite’s eyes went wide. “Why didn’t you say you were from Berkleyverse.”

“Would it have made a difference?” I asked, gesturing to the belts she used to bind my wrists and ankles to the bed railing.

She pretended to contemplate for a minute, but it was an easily shattered façade when she laughed. “No, probably not. Not like I can trust you.” Damn, she was always beautiful.

“We’ll need to interrogate you to make sure you’re who you claim to be.”

“Cool. Great. Because I know my dimension’s Paul is here. Let him verify me.”

Sophia smiled. “Glad we’re on the same page,” she said, just as a knock sounded on the door, two short raps.

She opened it to reveal Paul. He sported an equally gallant military ensemble, but the colors and pins were different. Not that I could tell you what that meant. I didn’t know if I could properly identify the military colors from my home dimension. The only solace I got was that he looked as uncomfortable in his garb as I did bound to a hospital gurney.

“Nice suit Little Brother. You gonna sport that look back at home? Bro code real quick, but I’m pretty sure Marguerite would jump you right then and there.”

He grimaced, but a slight smile turned up the corner of his lips. “Hmm, maybe. But my Theo might also remember that there’s another man who looks just like me who once wore a military uniform for my Marguerite. She still has dreams about his death.”

“There’s no way the Romanov royal guard wears the same outfit as this strange American Cold War era attire. I know you’re convinced of dimensional probability that you like to call ‘fate,’ but we both know you sound like a lunatic.”

His smile gave way to a curt laugh. “You sound like my Theo. Ready to prove it?”

“Ask away Little Brother.”

This was the best way to identify dimensional travelers. Home Office had asked their travelers to confirm a Beatles reference, but we’d declined something similar. It was possible another dimension had the same answer as us. Instead, it was just more guaranteed if we asked a question from our shared memory.

“What was the name of the strip club you dragged me to in Las Vegas?”

“The Red Dare. All the girls were dressed in these sexy as hell gold and red fishnet outfits. They all carried a single vodka shot between their boobs. It was the only way you could pay to touch the girls, to drink that vodka shot without using your hands. I thought it was amazingly appropriate, with the red velvet carpets and yellow sickle decorum.”

Paul finally let himself smile. “It wasn’t. But it was a very Theo thing to pick.” He turned back to Sophia. “This is my dimension’s Theo.”

“Verification confirmed,” she said as she and Marguerite began untying me.

Henry chose that moment to pop his head in with a tray of watered down tea cups. No one was prepared for my account, of the destruction of the Operator, the kidnapping of its successor, the nonexistence of Henry and Sophia of Cambridgeverse. Our confident assumption it was all carried out by some dimension’s Paul.

“I need to go back,” Paul said, standing up with his half-finished cup. “I need to warn Berkleyverse’s Henry and Sophia.”

I nodded. “The Operator is still down, but Cambridgeverse Paul will hopefully have it up and running soon. Then, we can go back to the normal message system. It’ll probably be a lot slower, since they’re missing a few troops in Cambridgeverse.”

“It’s just all the more reason to go after this evil Paul,” Marguerite said.

“We didn’t want to suspect anything mal-intended in the beginning,” Paul said. “But I think we all knew it would be. I need to go home to warn them.” He turned to me. “Do you have Marguerite’s coordinates? Follow her and warn her.”

“You don’t need to ask me twice. That’s my plan once this heart-to-heart is over.”

Henry held up a single finger, and it was enough to silence the whole room. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have Paul continue onward through the other dimensions instead of returning to his home dimension. If there is no Paul in Berkleyverse, there is no one for this Paul to jump into. It’ll lock the dimension from his grasp.”

“Chasing a criminal with the same person didn’t work really well with Wicked,” I said. Marguerite had been forced to remain in dimensions, just waiting for Wicked to jump ahead. “It basically guarantees you’ll never be able to catch him.”

“Our dimension prepared for this type of warfare.” Paul said. “We prepped operations in case either of us were targeted. Once I warn Sophia and Henry, we can commence those procedures.”

He didn’t even elaborate that these “procedures” were just intensely monitoring the individual. Paul would be locked into a room at Triad, paid for by Wyatt Conley himself, now terrified of any amount of dimensional travel. The room was equipped with state-of-the-art equipment so Paul could still work on any project, or dick off on Youtube, whatever he wanted. But he was constantly monitored via security feeds, and more importantly, the room had no door handle on the inside.

Paul reached for the Firebird around his neck. “Take care of Marguerite Theo,” and then he was gone. Standing at the foot of my bed, a groggy Paul took a few blinks.

“Private Beck, You look awful.”

“Thank you.”

Henry rose and gently patted Paul’s shoulder. “Come on Markov. Henry and I will bring you up to speed.” She glanced over her shoulder to toss me my own Firebird. “You better hurry on. No point in lingering here, and I’m sure my daughter would like her own Theo back.”

The three left, leaving me alone, once again, with this dimension’s Marguerite.

“Sorry for earlier,” I said, suddenly bashful. Those memories would stay with me for months of blissful fantasies. She didn’t need to know that though.

She shrugged but still wouldn’t look at me. “I guess I can’t really blame you. If I remember back from when your Marguerite possessed me, you blatantly lost. Like, she didn’t once look at you.”

“Ouch. Thanks for elaborating. I wasn’t sure I needed confirmation on just how badly I failed.”

“Look, I don’t understand it either. I can’t see any reason to date that awkward, anti-social giant. He’s like some pre-human ape, before we had developed language and proper social skills.”

“Oh come on, he’s not that bad.”

She finally turned to me, eye brows raised in disbelief. “Your Paul must be a lot different from mine then.”

I chuckled. “I don’t think so, not according to my Marguerite. But love is blind.”

“Very blind, apparently.”

I sighed. “Can I ask you something, as a Theo from a universe away who missed his chance?”

Her face fell, only slightly, her foot sliding across the tile floor back and forth. This Marguerite had a nervous twitch too. It was cute. I couldn’t think of one from my own Marguerite.

“You want to know how I fell in love with you?”

I nodded, then sighed. “Pretty pathetic question, huh? But I just keep wondering what the hell I did right here that I messed up everywhere else. Cause it’s true, you know, this is the only dimension I’ve been to where I’m the winner and Paul is the heartbroken loser. Not that I like seeing my best buddy all distraught, but I’d rather him than me.”

“I’m not sure. You were always so funny in the beginning. We met at this milkshake bar. We coincidentally both got off work at the same time, and you had a friend of my friend. The first day I met you, it was in a big group of people, a mix of your friends and mine. You had these dumb jokes, but they always made me laugh. By the end of the night, I’d forgotten all about the war that’d rampaged my whole life. Even when I got home, I kept thinking about how I wanted to hang out with you again. So, we met up again, and then again, and then you let me ride on the back of your motorcycle and we lied on a blanket under the stars as I confessed that I was falling in love.”

“So, I either need to start a world war in my home dimension or buy a motorcycle. Not gonna lie, I think I’d rather do the war gig.”

I missed her eye roll, but I heard it in her tone. “That right there. Your sarcasm and humor, no matter how bleak things get, you make a point to try and laugh. I can’t imagine any girl who wouldn’t fall for that.”

“Thanks… I guess.”

She shrugged then patted my Firebird. “It sucks that your dimension didn’t turn out right. I heard your Paul mention patterns of fate. I refuse to believe it. If he and I are meant to be together, then our multiverse is already fucked.”

That idea wasn’t much of a mood booster either. Before I got anymore down on myself, I slipped on my Firebird and did the one thing I’m better at than all else.

I chased after my Marguerite.


	5. Chapter 5

Bodies jostled against me. I wobbled, unbalanced not from the jump into a new Theo, but from the thickness of the crowd around me. It was as dense as smoke, people moving and parting like the ocean. 

I fought my own feet to maintain standing, and once confident I wouldn’t tumble and be trampled, I got the chance to look around.

“Oh shit.”

There was a sign right in front of me. Some sort of advertisement for a hair product, if the smiling girl with gorgeous silky hair was any indication.

I just couldn’t read it.

Because it was in Chinese.

“Well fuck.”

Whoever I was in this dimension, I didn’t know Chinese enough to retain it subconsciously. Back in Russiaverse, it’d been pretty cool, switching between Dutch, French, and English like some Eurocentric genius. I’d only been able to do it though because I’d grown up with all three of those languages in constant motion. I had no such luck with Chinese.

I darted out of the crowd, uncovering an empty wall to press up against. My pulse was racing. I was screwed if I don’t know the native language, but as I thought it, I spotted a sign hanging from the ceiling. The Chinese was front and center, but so was English. Thankfully.

So somewhere that spoke bother Chinese and English?... Alright, I could do this. If I could just calm down, I might be able to figure some things out. Like where I was.

It was obviously a subway station. I’d lived out my early high school years in New York City. Once you’ve seen one subway station, you’ve seen them all.

Okay, cool, I was in the middle of going somewhere, but where? My clothes were very… me. Just more stylish than an average day. But definitely me. Dark jeans paired with a band shirt. I’d never heard of Broken Fist and Mortal’s Revenge, but just based on the t-shirt alone, they definitely looked like something I’d be into.

And in my pocket was my phone.

“Interesting. They have iphones here too.” Cambridgeverse had those weird iphone contraptions, instead of the standard tphones I usually encountered. The two worked similar enough though.

Meaning they both had a lock screen. I typed in the same code I typed in every dimension. I pursed my lips as the screen flashed the failed notice at me.

“Every dimension it’s been Mom’s birthday! Why does the one time it’s not her birthday have to be the same dimension where I don’t speak the primary language?”

I pocketed my phone with a sigh. Noting left to do but figure out where I was. After a bit of stumbling around, I found an escalator, and a corridor, and then another one. Finally, I located a massive entrance, with the promise of sunlight blindingly bright.

It was very much a city. Skyscrapers erupted into the sky, their tips nearly in the clouds. Throngs of people were everywhere, selling electronics out of rolling carts, haggling pocket change for local fruit. One of those tiny stands happened to be a fold-out table coated in newspapers. I shuffled over, hands in my pockets, trying to appear like a nonchalant browser. I doubted the saleswoman bought it. But she did happily take my change in exchange for a newspaper on the front row.

I unfolded it, soaking in the English like oxygen. The bolded _The Straits Times_ across the top also told me what I needed.

“So, Singapore? Explains the Chinese.”

Nothing in the paper interested me, as I couldn’t see much reason to care about the results of a horse race a dimension away. But I couldn’t very well buy something and then not look interested in the thing. I flipped pages here and there, leaning against a pole. I think it had originally been a streetlamp, but the thing was decrepit. I think it’d been here since before the British left.

I should’ve guessed Singapore. I was kicking myself for my initial panic. Sophia and Henry had mentioned Marguerite jumped to Cloneverse. I’d just forgotten I lived in Singapore there. Or here. I guess. I _was_ currently in Singapore.

The universities here had been the ones bankrolling this Henry and Sophia’s research, which was focused on cloning, not interdimensional travel. Most people would probably assume physics and genetics were nowhere near interchangeable dominions of science. They’d be wrong. All science was interwoven. In a dimension that valued biology as much as this one, I didn’t find it at all surprising they’d obsessed over it.

Not that the realization did much for me. Without my cell phone, I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t call this dimension’s Sophia or Henry. I couldn’t even google to figure out which university they worked for. I was stuck.

And like a miracle, my phone began buzzing.

I yanked it out of my pocket so hard I nearly dropped it. I didn’t care who it was. I’d answer even the most annoying telemarketer, because as long as I answered the call, I’d have access to the home screen once the call ended.

When I saw the face on my phone, it was just another bout of good luck.

“Marguerite. Thank God you called me.”

There was nothing but silence… A long silence. “Marguerite?”

She cleared her throat. “I know you can have an untamable sense of humor… And that’s kinda what I’m hoping this is. Just a really poorly planned joke…”

“A joke?” I was trapped in Singapore without anyway to get ahold of anyone. I wished it was a joke too. The Firebird would be one hell of a pleasantry.

“Well… It’s either a joke, or you’re purposely calling me by your ex’s name, which if so… you can go fuck off.”

I blinked. Eyebrows furrowed, I pulled the phone from my ear, against her continued protests, most of which including cursing my name. The screen definitely displayed a picture of Marguerite. And then I took the time to read the contact name floating above the picture.

“Elodie?”

“Good job. You remembered my name. Want a cookie?”

“Oh crap. Cloneverse. You aren’t Marguerite. You’re one of the clones.”

My genius observation, which I should’ve realized immediately, since I’d visited this dimension once before, earned me another painfully long stint of silence.

“I have two theories. You either fell on your head, some sort of MRT-caused concussion when they braked too hard. Or, you’re a Theo from a separate dimension.”

“You got it in two. The last one. Which is, umm, well I’m lost. And I didn’t know my cell passcode, otherwise I would’ve just called Sophia. I was told a couple days ago that Berkleyverse Marguerite jumped over to this dimension, because communication was shut down. Oh, and I’m Berkleyverse Theo, if that helps.”

Elodie sighed. In the background, I heard her pull her phone from her mouth to say something in Chinese to someone who answered in equally complex Chinese, followed by scuffling and shuffling.

“Okay, so I just left the café. I’m going to come meet you. Where are you?”

“Umm…” I frantically looked around for any sort of sign. “Jurong East? Does that sound like somewhere I can be?”

A soft chuckle echoed in my ear. “You’ve never been to Singapore, huh? Yeah, that makes sense. You were probably transferring to the East West line. Do you think you could get back on the MRT?”

I barked a laugh. “I think I can handle a single subway ride.”

“Good. Take the East West line east to Dover Station. It’s only a few stations down. I’ll meet you outside.”

I got ready to hang up, the plans set, before a ball formed at the base of my throat. “Hey, quick question, but you haven’t seen Paul recently, have you? As in, he isn’t currently standing behind you?”

“Paul? My dimension’s Paul? No one’s seen him in about a week. He went off on some grandiose scuba diving expedition. He won’t be back until tomorrow, when Oceane and I go pick him up from the airport.”

Relief washed away the lump in my throat, and I hung up with a promise to Elodie. I’d meet her wherever she wanted. Cloneverse’s Paul had a strong alibi, not foolproof, but damn near close. Unless he’d taken a Firebird down to the depths with him, he was accounted for. I could just have Sophia check with the company he went with. They’d know if he hadn’t showed up for the span of a few days.

Elodie was easy enough to spot. She looked just like Marguerite, which was kinda the point of clones. She waved me down, the soft sundress flowing around her in the city congestion, a princess among her kingdom. I kicked myself as I walked over to her. I thought of some cheesy lines, but that one took the cake.

“Would it be too early in the conversation as to inquire what you’re doing here?” She asked, the first thing she said, turning and walking down the sidewalk before I’d even fully made it to her side.

“I need to tell my dimension’s Marguerite something.”

“And with Cambridgeverse nonresponsive, we have to communicate the old-fashioned way.”

I nodded, then quickly broke down all the events in Cambridgeverse. Elodie made little effort to let me keep up with her, and by the end of my etude, I was jogging to keep up with her. Thankfully, she ducked into a small café, classic European interior, French pastries decorating the showcase and white lace décor shoved into random pockets.

“We’ll keep our Paul on a close watch.”

She handed me a small plate with an unknown filled pastry on it. I hoped it wasn’t jelly, but I’d swallow any amount of gross fruit preserves if it accompanied the steaming coffee she placed in front of me.

“Yeah, nothing too intense. Like I said, I’m pretty confident your Paul is innocent. But we need to keep an eye on unannounced visitors.”

We were sitting towards the back of the cramped café. Chairs and tables were so close together, I could smell the designer cologne wafting over from the stranger beside me. Elodie was perfectly at ease, reclining back in her seat, an overstuffed messenger bag tucked behind her ankles.

“That’ll be an easy task. Oceane will be thrilled. Mom? Not so much, but not a lot she can do if we have to watch him.”

“Sophia doesn’t like Paul?” That was more appalling than the existence of eight Marguerites. In every world I’d seen where Paul and Sophia knew each other, she was crazy about him. She was happier about Paul dating Marguerite than he was.

She shrugged, tugging on the strap of her messenger back. She removed a thin sketch pad, a single pencil tucked in the binding rings. Absentmindedly, she flipped to a random page and began to softly sketch.

“She likes him enough. She liked him a lot less once Victoire ratted out Oceane for sneaking out to meet up at his apartment.”

I cackled, loud enough that the cologne-wearing fiend shot me a fierce glare. “Why am I not surprised he won in this dimension too? Though, my own Paul, I can’t see him defying Sophia and Henry to have Marguerite sneak out. They basically get it on upstairs while Henry and Sophia sit on the couch and beam about future grandchildren.”

She cringed, a slight scowl pulling at her lips. “Yeah, well, that’s kinda their opinion on you. Or it was. Probably not so much now. Mom might punch you if she saw you…”

I waited for her to continue. She just continued on her sketch, the only conversation between us the scrape of the pencil along the coarse paper.

“You gonna tell me why Sophia’s a risk on my life, because if I need to jump out of this dimension, I’d rather a heads up and not be scared shitless when she pulls a gun on me.”

“What is it with Americans and gun? This is literally the most anti-gun country in the world.”

“Okay, great, so she’ll just cold cock me instead. Either way, I’d like to be prepared before I chat with her.”

“About that…” Her pencil dangled on the edges of her fingers, unmoving. “I already sent Marguerite, your Marguerite, a text about you showing up. She was with Mom at a facility a few blocks down. Dover is pretty well know for educational facilities.”

“Makes sense we’d meet up here then.”

She pursed her lips and tilted forward to grab her drink. The angle gave me just enough space to see what she’d been so passionately working on.

It was a drawing of me.

“Actually, we’d originally had plans to meet in Bukit Merah, Redhill, because there was a good chance we wouldn’t run into anyone we knew. Which, adding to that… I need you to promise me that you won’t tell anyone that we had plans to meet up. If they ask, just say something like you texted me first or you saw my name on your Facebook feed or something.”

“Is Facebook still popular in this dimension? That’s concerning. When are you guys going to jump onto the Twitter bandwagon?”

“You going to keep interrupting me?”

I pulled my hands into my lap and hung my head. “No. I’m sorry. Please proceed.”

With a sigh, she turned to look out the window behind her. I could tell she was looking for someone. Quickly, she turned back to face me.

“They must be finishing something up at the lab. Look, I don’t have time to fully explain. Just say you’ll do it. I don’t want them finding out we had plans to meet up, especially with both of us dressed the way we are.”

I stared down at my own attire, not knowing whether I should be self-conscious or proud.

“What’s wrong with my clothes?”

A soft blush dotted her cheeks as she studied my clothes. “Nothing… You look really nice.”

No. No freaking way. I pondered her own clothes again. She looked good. Really good. Sexy even. The original plans she’d had with this Theo had included going to a part of Singapore where they were guaranteed to not know anyone. When I’d messed up and called her Marguerite out of habit, she’d been pretty pissed, _because_ she thought I was calling her by my ex’s name.

“Hold up. Are we on a date?!”

I couldn’t keep the bewilderment off my face. She saw it and quickly misjudged.

“Is that a problem for you?”

“No, no. I’m just shocked. It seems I get lucky in every universe but my own. I never win over the girl I love.”

Her rosy cheeks blossomed into a dark rouge. “We’re _not_ in love!”

“Yeah, sorry, I meant back in Berkleyverse. I’d loved Marguerite for a long time, and forget about it. It’s a long story.”

If I hadn’t been paying attention to her, noticing how that dark rouge spread down her neck and into the hollow of her throat, I would’ve missed the way she nibbled on her bottom lip.

“You claimed to love her here too.”

“And now you and I are on a date? That seems like a fast track to getting punched and tossed outside in the rain.”

“That’s why no one is supposed to know.”

“Oh I get it. We’re keeping it on the down low so your twin clone sister doesn’t find out you’re dating her ex-boyfriend.”

“You can’t just leave it alone, can you? You want to keep bugging me until I tell you the whole story?”

I shrugged, nearly tipping my empty coffee mug over. Thankfully, it was empty. “At this point, I’m extremely curious.”

She took a big breath of air, ready to spew a novel’s worth of information at me in one go. “You and Marguerite were dating for only a few months. You hadn’t even gotten that serious. No one knew I liked you, except Oceane, but only because she flipped through my sketch book one day when I wasn’t home and found all my drawings of you. I made her promise to keep it a secret though, or I’d tell Mom and Dad about the used condoms in the bathroom trashcan. But since you were dating Marguerite, you were around the house more, meaning I got to be around you more. Things heated up between us pretty quick. We’re more compatible. I’m the most scientifically inclined of my sisters, and we both have similar political opinions. You’re not from Singapore, so I’ll spare you the details, but politics here is a big deal. So, we hit it off, and the next thing we knew, I was sneaking you into the shower. It happened once, and you insisted on being all gentlemanly and cutting it off with Marguerite, but when you talked to her, she accused you of cheating, and you _didn’t_ lie. So, then she comes home screaming and causing a racket because you cheated on her and then had the audacity to breakup with her for some random ‘ _slut_ ,’ her words not mine, and here we are. The whole family hates you, and not like we can come forward with our relationship. Everyone would know you cheated on her with me.”

She huffed deep breaths, while I attempted to process her winded monologue. I wasn’t even sure I’d caught the whole story. This Theo sounded like a real player, or a sex fiend, or an idiot. All three were equally probable. But just before I could comment, she gave a sharp squeal of surprise.

“Marguerite! What was keeping you?”

I turned my head just as another clone joined us, her eyes peering down through unnecessarily thick sunglasses. This place was sunny, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t that intense. Nothing like Florida or the one time I’d visited Australia. Even with their density, I could still make out the way she studied me, searching for some proof of my identity. Even without all the background from Elodie, I knew my Marguerite was present in this dimension’s Marguerite. No one else would ever look me over as if they were searching for a psychopath.

“Tell me about the time you walked in on me half undressed in a bathing suit.”

I didn’t even need to think about it. If I’d seen Marguerite peeling a wet bikini off, I wouldn’t be standing here today. I would’ve died of a heart attack.

“That wasn’t you. It was Josie. I walked through the front door, and Josie was just in the living room, wetsuit unzipped to her waist, boobs hanging out. She wasn’t even phased. She’d been showing you her new nipple piercings, which she wanted to do before Henry got home and went all furious British father on her.”

She nodded. I would’ve lied if I’d said that the glowing smile that dawned on her lips didn’t make my heart stammer.

“What’s up Theo? Why’d you chase me out here? I have a sickening feeling it’s not good news.”

As concisely as I could, I broke down the events in Cambridgeverse, starting with that dimension’s Marguerite finding me nearly in a car accident to Paul acting like an abused dog on the office floor.

“Hmm, not surprised. They must not have worked much out since I was there.”

“You know why she hates him?”

“Yeah, and it’s pretty depressing. It wasn’t really his fault, but I can see why she has some issues around him.”

“You gonna enlighten the group or just keep being cryptic?” I asked, but as soon as I did, Cloneverse Sophia showed up, angrily demanding an explanation of why she’d been ripped away from her project, why the Operator was non-operational, and why Elodie was here. I parroted Elodie’s carefully constructed excuse at Sophia, which Elodie shot me a grateful glance for, and then began my tale of Cambridgeverse anew.

“Where’s our Paul?” Marguerite asked once I finished the second recounting.

“He jumped back home to Berkleyverse to warn our Henry and Sophia. I can’t imagine we’ll see him anytime soon. You know how he is, convinced he’d the deadliest thing in the entire multiverse. I’d bet my own Pontiac that he’ll volunteer himself to be locked in Triad for observation of unwelcome visitors.”

“As much as it hurts my heart to admit, that’s probably the best decision. Not like Paul can chase down the thief himself if the culprit really is another dimension’s Paul.”

Sophia pocketed her cellphone. She’d made a call in the middle of this crowded café without an ounce of concern about the cologne-coated stranger beside us who was growing to hate our group more and more by the millisecond.

“I just talked to the scuba diving facility. They can 100% confirm Paul’s attendance in all of the scheduled events. He was supposedly quite enthusiastic about the shark specimens.”

Elodie rolled her eyes. “Why does that not surprise me. Not like the first present Oceane ever gave him was a shark tooth necklace that he refuses to take off. He didn’t even like sharks that much until she gave it to him.”

“I don’t understand it either,” Sophia said, turning to her daughter. “But I am choosing to respect Oceane and Paul’s relationship. They obviously love each other dearly. He’s not the worst person any of you could bring home, and you know that your father and I only ask that you all bring home boys who love and respect you. That’s all we need.”

Elodie shot a subconscious glance at me, but Sophia was too preoccupied with her cell phone to see it.

“With Paul assigned to solitude, I guess I better head off too,” Marguerite said. She’d already wrapped her hand around the Firebird dangling around her neck. “It isn’t just the main dimension’s affected. So far, only this dimension, our dimension, Warverse, and Cambridgeverse know what’s going on. We need more allies. I’ll head over to the other dimensions that used the Operator, Mafiaverse and Oceanverse.”

“Have fun over there.” I patted her shoulder. “You are arguably the most hated person in all of Oceanverse.”

“It was a single submarine! By the way they act, you’d think I’d drowned a whole nation.”

I shrugged my shoulders and took my own Firebird in hand. “Good luck to you. Hope you don’t get thrown in sea jail.”

She didn’t even respond. One moment she was there, and the next, she was gone. Not the body though, of course. This dimension’s Marguerite came to easily, franticly blinking as she looked around. Sophia draped an arm over her daughter’s shoulder. She remembered everything clearly, since that was what happened when you were visited by a perfect traveler, that you remembered all your experiences under that person’s control. But it was still disorientating as hell.

“Well, I guess you’ll be off then,” Sophia said to me. “Thanks for stopping by and giving us a warning on Paul. We’ll keep a close eye on our own to make sure nothing strange goes on over here.”

There was no room for conversation on that. I secretly wanted to stay, talk more with Elodie about how I had such fantastic luck here, how it seemed I had luck everywhere but my own home dimension. But asking to stay and chat with her alone would probably look suspicious. The poor girl didn’t need any more worry about her secret.

“Right. I’ll be heading off then.”

Elodie met my gaze from beyond her mom’s back. I just had to hope that when this Theo came to, he played it cool. No groggy grumbling about his date or whatever. Not like there was anything else I could do, so without even a goodbye to Elodie, I opened my Firebird and punched in Cambridgeverse’s coordinates.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for: self-mutilation and suicide attempt

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

I yelped, definitely not the manliest of entrances into a dimension, but I couldn’t be blamed for that.

My hands felt like lava.

Instinct takes over in times like this, as pain floods the cerebrum. I didn’t note the grimy motel room, interlocking shades of grey, the stains along nearly every surface. A TV buzzed with a nearly silent film across the room. Only one lamp was on, the one beside the armchair where I was sitting.

Where I was bleeding.

Dark lines of bright red flowed over my palms. It dripped onto the carpet in a rhythmic tap. Which I promptly interrupted with a stream of curses as I took off for the adjoined bathroom. As I dashed for the sink, a metal clink echoed through the room. I looked back to see a box cutter had fallen out of my lap when I’d leaped up.

It was soaked in my own blood.

“Damn, that stings.”

The sink water was painfully cold for how humid this tiny bathroom was. Watching the dingy porcelain be painted in a bloody pink was enough of a fright for me to spew out another line of curses.

“Theo! Theo! Let me in!”

Frantic pounding began on the door in the bedroom, causing the hinges to rattle with the force.

“Theo, please. Don’t do this. _He_ can’t come back if you do it.”

The sink was just getting worse, and I’d even splashed blood off the rim and onto the tiled floor. Four deep line, two on each wrist, traveled from the curve of my wrist to the middle of my forearm. They were only a couple inches long, and the skin frayed on the edges, as if the Theo of this dimension had to _carve_ the skin back.

I ripped the only towel off the towel rack and wrapped it around my hands and wrists. Damn, that stung. But I needed to apply some pressure. I wasn’t a doctor. I wasn’t even CPR certified, but that water hadn’t helped at all.

“Theo! Please! I’ll call the cops.”

“Wait, wait, Marguerite, I’m coming. Hold on.”

The pounding stilled, but I could still hear her voice.

“Is that you Theo, the Berkleyverse Theo? Oh thank God. Are you alright? Did he hurt you?”

Am I alright? I watched a tiny spec of blood begin to surface through the mediocre towel. The pressure was definitely helping, but damn, what the hell had I been thinking? I glanced again to the box cutter on the floor. There was a story here. From the growing pit in my stomach, I doubted I wanted to know it.

The doorknob slid from between my wet fingers. I cursed, but after a few attempts, finally got the thing open.

“Theo!”

Marguerite flung herself at me with the weight of a truck. Her fingers were instantly on my face, hands, pockets.

“Where is it? I know he had it when he locked himself inside.”

Did she really need to look so anguished? Those eyes glistening with unshed tears, her face flush with worry and anxiety. Over me. And yet again, too bad it wasn’t my Marguerite. No, instead, not 30 minutes earlier, mine had stared me down, eyes searching for the murderer she’d always see buried in my soul.

“Oh God.” Her hand covered her mouth. I followed her gaze to note, thankfully, that the blood stain through the towel didn’t seem to be getting any bigger. She reached out for my wrists.

“Whoa, whoa. Let’s leave the towel on please. The pressure is helping, at least, I think it is.”

“So, he did try and do it.” It wasn’t a question. Only a confirmation of something she’d feared and hoped wasn’t true. “Does it hurt?”

“It hurts like Hell, but I think I jumped before he made it too bad.”

We crouched on the dirty floor, her skirt spread out around her knees. The door to the motel hallway sat wide open. I kicked it closed with the tip of my foot before a curious stranger peeked their head around. The door closed, leaving us alone, huddled on the floor, with the only illumination coming from a lamp and infomercial for cookware.

Her eyes, whether from the tears or the reflective stainless steel frying pan, were a perfect glow. It was as beautiful as the first Christmas lights of the season, the ones you see and know that the next few months will overflow with cheer, food, and laughter. Her finger tips lingered on the edges of the towel, clutching but gentle enough that I couldn’t feel it underneath the cotton.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Only my fingertips stuck out from the makeshift towel tourniquet. Ever so gently, hoping like a madman that she didn’t even notice, I brushed them along the edge of her palm.

“That jackass!”

I yanked my hand away. So much for trying to be subtle, but when she jumped up and began pacing, I got the feeling she hadn’t even noticed my poor attempt at comfort. She even stopped her foot. Literally, hands on her hips, foot slammed down on the floor. It would’ve been cute if my ears weren’t still aching from the unexpected expletive.

“I told him not to do it. You could’ve died! Well, he would’ve died, but then you wouldn’t have been able to come back to this dimension. Selfish bastard. I fucking told him. First, he stands in traffic and as soon as he gets his body back, he races to a hardware store for suicide equipment. He didn’t even care we were in the middle of an interdimensional investigation. Fuck him.”

“Whoa whoa, let’s slow down there. You’re jumping to conclusions.”

“No I’m not!” She said, anger dripping off the tip of her tongue, but still Marguerite enough to help me stand. I sat on the edge of the bed while she glared me down. It was as freezing as any parent’s disapproving stare.

“I need an explanation. Obviously, you’ve had some adventures in the day and half I’ve been gone.”

“Which, before I start my summary, is about a day too long. What was keeping you?”

“I got crushed by a tree.”

I was known for poorly placed jokes, that was true, but even she didn’t doubt the truth of that statement, not with my deadpan delivery.

“Well, while you were out playing Hares and Hounds, this dimension’s Theo was trying to off himself. It’s why when you first jumped, you were in the middle of the road. So, this motherfucker, when you jump out to go warn Berkleyverse Marguerite and Paul, he sees all the panic going on, and he bolts. I was trying to help Paul work on the Operator, which he should be done with by now, by the way. But this guy, he starts texting me a suicide letter! I track him down, freaking out, because what if he actually did it and took you out of this dimension? And that’s what I’ve been doing, chasing this insane cryptic around while Paul camps in my living room.”

“You really do like to cuss. I’m not sure if I find it endearing or concerning.”

She slapped the edge of my shoulder, not enough to genuinely hurt, but enough to warn me away from further teasing. “I’ll say whatever damn words I want to. No one asked for your opinion on my femininity.”

“So, this Theo… he’s got some issues,” I said, finally acknowledging the gruesome situation.

“Oh, Theo.” Her arms wrapped around my shoulders, all that wrath now melted into a single embrace. “I was so worried about you.”

I wanted to correct her, that she was concerned about this dimension’s Theo, not me. I would’ve been unaffected, apart from just not being able to come back to Cambridgeverse. But she squeezed me in a tight hug. And I wasn’t about to do anything to end that. Until I unwillingly cringed, a light grunt breaking through when I grit my teeth. My wrists had slammed together in her hug.

“I’m sorry. Geeze, I’m being so inconsiderate, just wailing at you while you sit here bleeding out. Here, let me see them.”

“How do you go from an explosion of curses in one sentence to using ‘geeze’ with a straight face in another?”

She didn’t hear me, or she chose not to hear me. All her focus was on gently unwrapping my wrists.

“I have some experience with wrist injuries,” she said as she studied the pulled apart skin near the base of my palm. “These are definitely ugly, but they aren’t as deep as you probably think. If you can curl all your fingers into a fist, without too much pain, you’ll be fine.”

“Is that why you fidget with your right hand?”

My previous attempts to ask her about that hadn’t gone well. I didn’t know where my confidence was coming from that _now_ was the best time to ask, but it must have been ordained from the multidimensional travel gods. Because she actually replied.

“Yeah. There was an accident. I sustained permanent damage to the nerves in my right wrist. Think of it as permanent carpal tunnel, severe and painful anytime I use that hand.”

She retrieved loose toilet paper from the bathroom. She tore the only roll into large chunks to gently scrape away at the scabbed blood pooled.

“I wonder what’s wrong with this Theo. I won’t lie, I’ve had some rough patches back in my dimension. Everyone gets those depression phases now and again, you know? But this guy, he’s obviously going through some stuff. And here you are, injured, no obligation to show this stranger any compassion, and you’re chasing him around the city, trying to save him, and he still tries to off himself.”

“I can only be so mad at him… Not like I’ve never considered it.”

I couldn’t handle that. My hand rose, freeing itself from her fussing and cleaning, to cup her chin. I turned her eyes up until they stared into my own.

“Any dimension without its Marguerite is a dimension lacking.”

She yanked herself free, turning out of my grasp to stare at one of the many unknown stains on the carpet.

“And any Marguerite without her art is a Marguerite lacking.”

“You can’t do art?”

“How am I supposed to? I lost most mobility in my right hand. Not like I can pick up a paintbrush. I’d just gotten my acceptance letter into The Ruskin School of Art at Oxford. I was stoked. I was going to do the impossible, attend one of the top schools for professional art. And then the accident happened. The airbag crushed the bone, which was one thing, but then bits of the windshield dug their way into my arm, lodging themselves between my carpal bones. After that… well, I had to turn down the acceptance.”

“A car crash?...” When I’d last been here, hadn’t she mentioned a crash? “Wait, didn’t you ask Paul about a car crash to validate him as your dimension’s Paul?”

An ugly scowl appeared on her face. I regretted asking it, vehemently wanted to tell her I was being dumb to brush off asking her something so personal, but I didn’t. Maybe it was selfish of me, but I felt something in the room, intermixed with the muggy climate. The way the dingy light bled everything in this room into a dingy grey except her, it felt important. That her color still showed through the washout.

“He was driving. We got into a fight, one of those yelling ones, that you get used to as a couple, but all your friends will tell you means you guys aren’t compatible. Things got heated, and he wasn’t paying attention… I woke up on the side of a field, surrounded by warped metal and glass. He was unconscious beside me. My hand was crushed under the front bumper. I couldn’t even feel it. The doctor said I was lucky I retained even the dismal amount of muscle control that I have.”

She laughed, a harsh, crocked sound. When she finally looked up at me, I saw how her colors had changed. They still glowed, but I hated the muted hues it now possessed.

“Isn’t that funny? I was as happy as I could be, promised to one of the best art schools in the world, even if my boyfriend was lackluster. And then a single accident, and I lost everything. And here you are. I looked up this Theo on the internet. He goes to Columbia over in New York. Scholarship funded. His Facebook is overflowing with pictures of friends and parties. You have everything in the world. And yet, if you hadn’t jumped into this Theo when you did, he might be dead.”  
“I’d say that sounds more depressing than funny, but far from me to question. Back in my dimension, I’d say I have it pretty good. I’m sorry you’re struggling so much.” I reached out to clasp her shoulder, or pat her back, something friendly and reassuring, but then I noted the drops of blood bubbling through the scab. I yanked my wrist back with a curse, pressing the injury into the bedspread to apply more pressure before I got blood on her clothes.

She chuckled. “You probably don’t want to do that. Who knows what diseases that thing has.”

She was right, but I still wasn’t about to drip blood all over her sweater. Besides, it gave me some time to think. I wasn’t the best at this kind of conversation. I mean, who was? How was anyone supposed to talk to someone who’d had their dreams stolen from them? I’d had my fair share of rough patches, but what Marguerite was going through, that was different. Anger flared within me, and I was suddenly furious at this dimension’s Theo. How dare he try something so stupid when a girl like her was suffering. I knew he didn’t know her, but anger wasn’t a rational emotion. I wanted to punch the guy. Which was just as dumb, considering I’d just be punching myself.

Here was his dimension’s Marguerite, safe and aching for someone to make her life stable again. And then her parents up and get kidnapped by the same damn guy who ruined her hand. My own dimension’s Marguerite had her share of shit to deal with, having been selected as Triad’s personal interdimensional errand girl, but she had nothing on this. And still, this girl found the will to smile, to bandage my wrists, to chase some suicidal madman around London. All the while, my world’s Marguerite, she couldn’t be bothered to care for anyone more than her precious Paul and the long-dead Lieutenant Markov, who started that whole vexing romance.

“Let’s go out.”

I wasn’t going to lie. I hadn’t been paying much attention to her. She’d gotten up at some point in my internal soliloquy to fetch a rag. She’d just returned with it draped over her forearm, damp with lukewarm water.

“What?”

She reached for my wrist. Thankfully, the scabbing seemed to mostly be solidified. She began the tedious work of cleaning up the smeared blood.

“London. I’ve never been here, not anything more than passing through the airport on a connecting flight. I want to see what this city has to offer. It’s Friday, right? I think it is. Nightclubs, bars, strip clubs, I don’t care.”

At that final suggestion, I finally got her to breathe a tiny smile. It was a start. She deserved to smile more.

“So, what do you say? Think you could show off this city’s best.”

“I know just the place, and I bet I can outdrink you.”

“Challenge accepted.”


End file.
